


oh, my love, don’t forsake me (take what the water gave me)

by icygrace



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Post Season 2 Finale Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 20:13:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6165383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icygrace/pseuds/icygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foolishly, he thought she no longer had any power to wound him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, my love, don’t forsake me (take what the water gave me)

**Author's Note:**

> Post-season 2 finale fic. Title from “What the Water Gave Me” by Florence + the Machine. 
> 
> This was written pre-season 3 – i.e., before Dash became a thing, before half a season went by without Kenna, and before we knew what the pirate’s role on the show would be - and shelved, so very (inaccurately) speculative. Impulse posting because "and on your head a crown" is undergoing growing pains!

“Bash, could I speak with you?”

 

He nods and Mary enters his office with some hesitation.

 

“I – I know you are aware of Kenna’s . . . situation. I’ve arranged for her to stay with some friends of mine and for a family to adopt the baby in Sweden. Because she’ll be away from court for several months, we’re putting about the story that she is decorating a royal retreat. Can I count on you not to contradict me?”

 

He’s not so vindictive that he would. “Yes, of course.”

 

“And to wait on beginning an annulment until she returns? So there won’t be talk?”

 

He nods.

 

“Thank you. It’s obvious that giving the child up will be hard enough; I’d like to make sure life won’t be any harder than it needs to be when she returns to court.” Mary turns back to look at him for a moment, but says nothing further.

 

\---

 

After a night filled with terrifying thoughts of Delphine, Kenna is all he can think about when he finally wakes.

 

Perhaps just as important as the sense of betrayal was the attack on his pride, the thought of being tricked into raising a traitor’s child.

 

_If you had come to me in honesty, I might have considered it. But you lied to me and tried to trick me._

 

If she could have guessed that answer, “might have” might have seemed like too big a gamble with her child’s future.

 

_Stop using this child only to save yourself. We are finished._

 

He’d realized how illogical that accusation had been nearly as soon as he’d left her – she wouldn’t have needed saving if there wasn’t a child. Otherwise she could have just carried on looking for another man so that they could have their marriage annulled.

 

Realizing that, he decides to go after her, meaning to stop her, but she is already gone.

 

It is too late.

 

\---

 

“They were – they were all put to the sword,” he hears Mary whisper in horror as he enters his brother’s private office and forgets at once the matter he meant to speak to Francis about.

 

“Who?” Francis demands. “Who were put to the sword?” he insists when she remains silent. “Did something happen in the vi –”

 

“The ship. Everyone on the ship but the King of Imereti and his sister.”

 

“What ship?”

 

Mary can barely choke out the words. “The ship I sent Kenna away on.”

 

He’s been so absorbed in trying to capture Delphine and break her spell that he’s had precious little time to think about Kenna. And he’s been thankful for it. Even when he sleeps, he does not think of her, because Delphine speaks to him in his dreams.

 

Now, his first thought, absurdly, is that if he were a woman this would be the first moment in his life he would have swooned.

 

“We have to receive him,” Mary says dully. “The king, and his sister, too. They are not far behind the messenger. But I don’t know that I’m fit for company at present. I –”

 

“I’ll see to it,” Francis offers at once.

 

Mary nods her thanks and departs.

 

“Bash –”

 

“I intend to drown myself in a barrel of wine or three,” he tonelessly informs his brother, whose pitying gaze burns into his back as he walks away.

 

\---

 

He is well on his way to drowning his unexpected sorrows in the commander’s quarters when his brother bursts through the door. “Bash! Bash! You won’t believe it.”

 

“Has one of our number been slain by highwaymen now?”

 

“Bash – the king of Imereti’s so-called _sister_ . . . it’s Kenna! He lied to the pirates, so they’d think she’d fetch a high ransom, too, as a princess, and spare her. It was so clever. He just thought it best not to give the game away until they were actually here, you know.” Francis snatches the goblet from his suddenly numb fingers.

 

\---

 

“Kenna –” he nearly gasps when he sees her.

 

“I know you must not want to see me and I’m doing everything I can to leave again as soon as possible,” she says quickly. “Please don’t make a scene; I’m begging you. Mary has done so much to –”

 

“I won’t – I’d – I’d wanted to speak with you, before you left, but you were already gone.”

 

“Why?” she asks uneasily.

 

“Stay.”

 

“There’s nothing here for me anymore. There’s no way I _can_ stay. Please don’t taunt me.”

 

“Let’s speak privately for a moment.” He finds an empty room off the corridor and ushers her in. “I’ve given things some thought.” He steels himself. “I won’t pretend I’m not still angry with you for trying to trick me into thinking the child mine. You should have told me the truth.”

 

“I –”

 

“I don’t want to hear excuses.”

 

“They’re not – then what’s the point? You’ve already told me this.”

 

“The point is that I do know what it is to be a bastard and there’s an innocent child involved who’s going to be hurt if I leave you to the fate that _you_ deserve. So I will claim it. You can’t expect my trust or for me to play at being a doting father and we would continue to lead separate lives, but I would call your child mine so that you could keep it with you.”

 

“I’ll stay,” she says quickly. “Thank you,” she adds. “I really didn’t want to have to give it away.”

 

\---

 

After giving Kenna a way to stay, he focuses his energies on Delphine.

 

“The binding spell can only be broken in death,” Nostradamus says.

 

“Hers or mine?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“She survived, when she burned –” A sudden panic seizes him. “I could feel it. If she dies, will I die, too?”

 

\---

 

After his conversation with Nostradamus, he is eaten up with worry for days, so distracted as he enters his bedchamber that it takes him a moment to register that he’s just heard a scream, from what sounds like the bath. When he does, he runs.

 

\---

 

Delphine had clearly come upon Kenna as she was about to enter her bath, as she doesn’t have a stitch of clothing on.

 

Delphine, he realizes dimly, is not holding the knife at Kenna’s throat, as most people would do in such a situation, but against her belly, the too-sharp tip pressing worryingly into the gently rounded swell of it without breaking skin.

 

At best, Delphine means to cause her to lose the child without killing her. At worst, Delphine could cut her open neck to navel, killing child and mother both.

 

He can allow neither. He knows what must be done. He pulls out his own dagger – not to threaten Delphine, but to hold dangerously near to his own heart.

 

“What –”

 

He ignores Kenna’s interjection. “Release her or I will end both our lives.”

 

“Both – Bash, no!”

 

“That won’t break our connection. Our love is eternal.”

 

That’s when he sees Delphine’s eyes flicker to the full bathtub. “I cannot love a murderess. Release her and I will be yours, forever. Willingly.”

 

Delphine obeys and Kenna moves away towards the door, clutching at her middle, but does not leave them.

 

When Delphine closes the gap between them, he seizes his opportunity at once, lunging at her and shoving her face first into the bath.

 

_Don't let them drown me. Please, just don't let them drown me. Promise. Don't let them drown me._

 

Somewhere behind him, he hears Kenna scream.

 

He holds Delphine down until she stops struggling.

 

It is awful, but it is a relief.

 

_Finally._

 

\---

 

After dispensing with Delphine, his duties are far more mundane. Troublesome local officials who need a firm hand and the like, work that makes him irritable and impatient with its minutiae.

 

“My lord –”

 

“I’m rather busy –”

 

“The queen bid me tell you that your wife’s pains are upon her.”

 

“Damn it,” he swears.

 

“My lord?”

 

“It’s too soon,” he mumbles. “It’s too soon.”

 

If the child should not survive, he’d be released from the responsibility he’s taken upon himself, but even though it isn’t his, he doesn’t wish harm on it. Still, though it is a terrible thought, it is the truth. He shakes his head and rises from his desk.

 

“My lord?”

 

“I’m going.”

 

“The queen didn’t ask for you, nor did she say Lady Kenna did.” The guard looks puzzled. Most men stay far from these matters but Bash doesn’t actually need to go in.

 

He’ll just check with Mary how things are going.

 

\---

 

“Bash.” Mary looks puzzled, too. “I didn’t mean for you to come.”

 

“I thought as much. Still, I wanted to check on things. How does she fare?”

 

“Remarkably well. I was concerned because –”

 

He hears a long scream from inside the birthing chamber. “That’s the sound of ‘remarkably well?’” he asks disbelievingly.

 

“It’s painful, of course, it always will be, but considering the circumstances, yes,” Mary assures him. “It’s going very quickly. It’s the long labors that are the worst because the mother begins to lose her strength.”

 

He remembers then that Mary assisted the sisters with such things when she lived in the convent. She’d told him that when she helped with Isobel. But now is not the time to think of his late cousin.

 

To think he and Mary were once engaged and he thought himself madly in love with her. Now she is married to his brother and supporting his wife as she labors to bring another man’s child into the world.

 

He shakes his head at himself as he walks back to his office. It won’t do any good for him to think like that. He said he would claim this child as his own and, in order not to make all their lives miserable, he must think of it as his own as well.

 

\---

 

Another servant comes to him later to inform him that all is well. After some hesitation, likely fearing that his disappointment would be vented upon him, the man adds, “You have a healthy daughter, m’lord. The queen is with them now.”

 

He makes his way to his wife. When he hears her speak, he stops outside, suddenly seized by a desire to know what she is thinking now, uncensored by her concerns about what he will think.

 

“I didn’t want to say it front of the midwife, but thank God.”

 

There’s a long pause.

 

“I – I worried, what if it was a boy? Could he really live with a boy who would inherit his title and lands? Would he change his mind? Would we be lost?”

 

Or perhaps Kenna might be forced to give her son away as Catherine had had to give Clarissa away because her wine-stained face marked her clearly as her father’s daughter.

 

He cannot hear Mary’s reply, but it hardly matters.

 

It must have been terrible, waiting with bated breath for so long.

 

He’s underestimated how little faith Kenna has in him now. He’d given his word and still Kenna has doubted him all these months. The pain is as sharp as his stab wound of old and it is only then that he _fully_ understands why she was driven to deceive him.

 

“My sweet girl,” Kenna coos softly, oblivious to the fact that her candor has shattered him.

 

Foolishly, he thought she no longer had any power to wound him.


End file.
